As RedState reported, the Trump administration scored a big win on Monday, with the Supreme Court staying a lower court ruling barring ICE from conducting immigration stops without probable cause. The original decision, which came from Biden-appointed California District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong, was spawned after a series of high-profile raids carried out in Los Angeles.
At the time, Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) proclaimed that "justice has prevailed." I suspect he won't be quite as optimistic about or respectful of the Supreme Court's latest smackdown.
SEE: SCOTUS Issues Critical Ruling on L.A. Immigration Stops
Of course, this decision wasn't unanimous. As expected, the three liberal justices went the other way, with Justice Sonia Sotomayor penning the dissent and Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown-Jackson joining. The latter not writing her own dissent was a welcome reprieve from perhaps the most obnoxious, ill-informed member of the Supreme Court in modern history. Still, Sotomayor did her level best to match Brown-Jackson's pedigree by throwing a fit.
Sotomayor dissent on SCOTUS decision on ICE raids in LA: “We should not have to live in a country where the Government can seize anyone who looks Latino, speaks Spanish, and appears to work a low wage job. Rather than stand idly by while our constitutional freedoms are lost, I…
— Jesse Rodriguez (@JesseRodriguez) September 8, 2025
Instead of allowing the District Court to consider these troubling allegations in the normal course, a majority of this Court decides to take the once-extraordinary step of staying the District Court’s order. That decision is yet another grave misuse of our emergency docket. We should not have to live in a country where the Government can seize anyone who looks Latino, speaks Spanish, and appears to work a low wage job. Rather than stand idly by while our constitutional freedoms are lost, I dissent.
Get this lady a primetime show on MSNBC already. Or excuse me, MSNOW.
It's just astonishing to me on a base level, though not surprising on a partisan one, that we have two Supreme Court justices who so fundamentally misunderstand what their role is, or worse, they simply don't care. At least Kagan tries to keep up appearances in her writings. Sotomayor and Brown-Jackson don't even bother. They routinely operate in ways that ignore any actual interpretation of the law in favor of pontificating about their own ideals, as if they were politicians running for office. This dissent is no exception.
It is not Sotomayor's job to save whatever "constitutional freedoms" she believes are being lost. It's her job to look at individual cases, decide if the plaintiff(s) have standing, and then rule based on what is technically allowed under current law. Sotomayor may think it's awful for ICE to conduct immigration stops in California, but that's irrelevant. As the majority opinion pointed out, it is up to Congress to pass heavier restrictions if so desired. It is not the job of judges to, of their own volition, decide something is illegal just because they don't like it. That's not democracy. That's judicial tyranny that wholesale eliminates the very basis of elections.
The fact that the Supreme Court has to continue overturning and chastising these lower courts for stepping so far out of line legally is disturbing. It shows just how close to the line we currently are, while highlighting just how important it was that President Donald Trump and a Republican Senate got to appoint and confirm the last three justices. Imagine how far down the rabbit hole we'd be if there were a liberal majority today.
Sotomayor and her left-wing colleagues should seriously consider how much more damage they want to do to the court with their partisan antics. The job is not to "save democracy." It's not to protect sufficiently intersectional populations. It's to interpret the law. That's it.
Editor's Note: Radical leftist judges are doing everything they can to hamstring President Trump's agenda to make America great again.
Help us hold these corrupt judges accountable for their unconstitutional rulings. Join RedState VIP and use promo code FIGHT to get 60% off your membership.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member